Forum Responses ---150 words each for total of 300 words- 12pt times roman turabian style
Topic Thinking Globally, from the material
Part I Kevin post
The community in which I'm writing about is the city of Augusta, Georgia; more specifically the neighborhood of Harrisburg. Harrisburg is where my church is located (Crawford Avenue Baptist Church). It's a historical church, but much like the neighborhood, it was in decline for many years until two years ago we relocated from the suburbs to merge with the existing church.
Harrisburg is an old mill town that began to die in the 1970s as the mills started to close. It's fairly racially diverse with a roughly 50/50 split between blacks and whites. The median income for Augusta is 38,000 with many Harrisburg residents making under 20,000 a year (City Data). As we engaged the community, several of the children from the neighborhood began attending the church on a regular basis. What we noticed was that the children were coming to church hungry and raiding the small complimentary bagels and fruit we have available.
This made us aware of the issue of child hunger in our community. Child hunger is a global issue, but we wanted to know how we could tackle it on a local scale. In recent weeks we've been in communication with a non-profit named, Healing in Fashion Foundation, which specializes in addressing child hunger throughout the states of Florida and Georgia (Hiffstars 2010).
The goal is for the foundation to use our facility to cook, serve, and store meals for the children of Harrisburg. We understand child hunger is a systematic issue, so we know feeding the children is only a band-aid on the problem. We also have nine-week, soft job skills program designed for families in generational poverty (Reconcile Augusta).
In addition, we partner with another non-profit organization called Turn Back the Block (TBTB). TBTB focuses on building new homes and restoring old ones predominantly for low-income families (Turnbacktheblock.com). The final piece is working with Augusta University to establish a tutoring project in Harrisburg as well by using education majors to give them practical and gradable teaching experience. Our goal is to use the network of like-minded non-profits in the local area to tackle the issue of poverty and child hunger collectively and systematically.
"Reconcile Augusta." Crawford Avenue Baptist Church.
"Augusta, Georgia." Augusta, Georgia (GA 30904) profile: population, maps, real estate, averages, homes, statistics, relocation, travel, jobs, hospitals, schools, crime, moving, houses, news, sex offenders.
"Hiff." Hiff.
"About." Turn Back The Block.
Part II Jeff Post
South Texas is a decidedly unique geographical area on many different levels. First and foremost, the impact that illegal immigration has had is mind-boggling. As the Border Patrol established a series of interior checkpoints, they created a population that is notably different from any other place in America. For this forum, we will focus specifically on South Texas.
As illegal immigrants fleeing their native homeland for a slew of reasons arrived safely in the United States they are forced to decide whether to stay put close to the Mexican border yet relatively safe in an area inundated with a wide variety of US Customs Agents or to continue north.
Continuing north is done through two options: 1) Risk detection in a vehicle by going through a checkpoint in which all vehicles are scrutinized. 2) Risk their life by traveling north on foot through thousands of square miles of desolate and unforgiving ranchland. Where this connects to this week's discussion comes in the form of immigration policies. Driving down any main route through a town or city and you will pass a handful of legal offices specializing in the American immigration processes, but also asylum procedures.
ProBAR and RAICES are both organizations that specialize in navigating the immigration process. While both offer the same services as many other legal firms, these two groups offer their services either Pro Bono (free of charge) or at drastically reduced rates. Neither site publishes the number of clients they service, however, access to these legal services are instrumental to hundreds if not thousands of people looking to immigrate to the United States. In a short time, both ProBAR and RAICES have taken action within South Texas to combat the illegal immigration problem within the United States.
While acting locally, these organizations are working to highlight the international issues leading to the mass exodus from South and Central America. Many of these problems fall far out of the jurisdictional authority of the United States; torture, murder, rapes, etc. often occur at the hands of corrupt government officials and violent cartel organizations. Both ProBAR and RAICES actively campaign throughout the Rio Grande Valley (S. Texas) and in Washington to address not only the internal process to citizenship, but to address the violent crimes committed by corrupt governments abroad.
These organizations are merely two actively addressing the issues leading to the illegal immigration. In order to fix that problem, both organizations realize that working to call attention to the issue locally is the best way in which they can contribute to solving the issues surrounding illegal immigration spanning two continents.
"ProBAR." South Texas Pro Bono Asylum Representation Project (ProBAR) | Special Committees and Commissions / Commission on Immigration. Accessed December 22, 2017.
"Stop the Raids!Sponsor a Family." RAICES (Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services). Accessed December 22, 2017.
"Think Globally, Act Locally." HuffPost (web log), July 13, 2014. Accessed December 22, 2017.